How to craft the perfect parallax wallpaper for your iPhone and iPad

Sick of stretched, blurry or otherwise lame wallpapers on your iPhone or iPad? Apple's decision to make your background come alive with the parallax effect in iOS 7 means that using your standard wallpapers ends up giving you some not-so-sharp effects.

But fear not: You can create a wallpaper of your own using any high-resolution photos you can find online. Below, you'll find the perfect resolutions for both static and parallax wallpapers as well as some tips on how to create the perfect background image for your device.

iPhone 4s

Static: 960 x 640

Parallax: 1,196 x 740

iPhone 5/5s/5c

Static: 1,136 x 640

Parallax: 1,392 x 744

iPad 2/iPad mini

Static: 1,024 x 1,024

Parallax: 1,262 x 1,262

iPad 3/4/Air/mini 2

Static: 2,048 x 2,048

Parallax: 2,524 x 2,524

Once you've found an image that fits your needs, it's time to cut it to the perfect size. There are plenty of free tools available to help you tweak it: